g eye of the other, how thoroughly his speech had succeeded.

"I wonder will she know me!" said Jack, after a pause. "_You_ certainly
did not at first."

"Nor, for that matter, did _you_ recognize _me_."

"Ah, but I did, though," said Jack, passing his hand over his brow; "but
I had gone through so much, and my head was so knocked about, I could
n't trust that my senses were not deceiving me, and I thought if I make
any egregious blunder now, these people will set me down for mad. That
was the state I was in the whole time you were questioning me. I promise
you it was no small suffering while it lasted."

"My poor fellow, what trials you must have gone through to come to
this! Tell me by what mischance you were at Ischia."

With all a sailor's frankness, and with a modesty in speaking of his own
achievements just as sailor-like, Jack told the story of the storm at
Naples.

"I had no thought of breaking the laws," said he, bluntly. "I saw ships
foundering, and small craft turning keel uppermost on every side of me;
there was disaster and confusion everywhere. I had no time to inquire
about the morals of the men I saw clinging to hencoops, or holding on by
stretchers. I saved as many as I could, and sorry enough I was to have
seen many go down before I could get near them; and I was fairly beat
when it was all over, or, perhaps, they 'd not have captured me so
easily. At all events," said he, after a minute's silence, "they might
have let me off with a lighter sentence, but my temper got the better of
me in court, and when they asked me if it was not true that I had made
greater efforts to save the galley-slaves than the soldiery, I told them
it might have been so, for the prisoners, chained and handcuffed, as
they were, went down like brave men, while the royal troops yelled and
screamed like a set of arrant cowards; and that whenever I pulled one
of the wretches out of the water I was half ashamed of my own humanity.
That speech settled me; at least, the lawyer said so, and declared he
was afraid to say a word more in defence of a man that insulted the
tribunal and the nation together."

"And what was your sentence?"

"Death,--commuted to the galleys for life; worse than any death!
It's not the hardship or the labor, I mean. A sailor goes through more
downright hard work on a blowy night than these fellows do in a year.
It is the way a man brutalizes when vice and crime make up the whole
atmosphere of his life.